Microsoft CFO’s AI Spending Runs Up Against Tech Bubble Fears

Amy Hood took a look at the numbers, didn’t like what she saw and stomped the brakes.

It was late 2024, and Microsoft Corp. was spending more in a single quarter than it once shelled out in an entire year, racing to build data centers and stock them with chips in anticipation of rising demand for artificial intelligence and other cloud services.

Hood, Microsoft’s longtime chief financial officer, questioned the reliability of the company’s internal projections and believed the spending binge risked getting out of hand, according to multiple people working with her at the time. She made the call to ...